Dial H for Hero

Dial H for Hero is a comic book feature published by DC Comics about a mysterious dial that enables an ordinary person to become a superhero for a short time, by selecting the letters H-E-R-O in order. Each time it is used, the dial causes its possessor to become a superhero with a different name, costume, and powers. These superheroes are usually new, but on one occasion the dial caused its user to become a duplicate of an existing superhero, Plastic Man.[1] Some versions of the dial contain additional letters, allowing other kinds of transformations.[2]

Contents

Original series

The original series debuted in House of Mystery #156 (January 1966), and continued until issue #173 (March–April 1968). The art was by Jim Mooney (though he did not finish the run), with scripts by Dave Wood. The original owner of the dial is Robert "Robby" Reed, a smart teenager from Littleville, Colorado who lived with his grandfather, "Gramps" Reed, and their housekeeper Miss Millie. Having a penchant for exclaiming, "Sockamagee!", Robby discovered the dial in a cavern. Resembling an old telephone dial, this device is hand-held and covered in unknown symbols (that Robby was able to decipher into modern letters). In issue #9 of the current volume of The Brave and the Bold, Robby reveals to Tin of the Metal Men that the symbols are Interlac, suggesting at least some relevance between the later 31st Century of the Legion of Super-Heroes and the Dial's construction.

How the dial got there or who created it is never revealed. Each time he dials the letters H-E-R-O, Robby finds he turns into a different super-powered being; dialing O-R-E-H makes him revert to his normal form. Under the guises of numerous superheroes, Robby soon uses the dial to protect Littleville.

Robby's H-Dial was once used by his foe, Daffy Dagan, who in House of Mystery #158 (April 1966) briefly becomes a supervillain known as Daffy the Great after dialing V-I-L-L-A-I-N. In House of Mystery #169 (September 1967), Robby's girlfriend Suzie uses the dial, dialing H-E-R-O-I-N-E to temporarily transform into Gem Girl in order to help defeat Toymaster. At the end of the story, Suzie receives a blow to the head that causes her to forget about the secret of the device.

After the series ceased its run in House of Mystery, Robby appeared in Plastic Man #13 (June–July 1976). Recovering from an attack of amnesia, Robby retrieves his dial, which has become corroded with rust. The corrosion causes Robby to turn into an evil version of Plastic Man, and he attacks the real Plastic Man. After defeating Robby and returning him to normal, Plastic Man confiscates the dial from Robby for using it irresponsibly. It is never explained how Robby is seen with the dial in later stories.

During the Silver Age cross-over event, Robby encountered his old House of Mystery co-star J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter, in Silver Age: Dial H for Hero #1. Believing that he—and the rest of the Justice League—had gone bad, Robby turns into a superhero to stop him. Actually, the Martian has been mind-swapped with Dr. Light (the other JLAers have undergone similar mental transpositions, but those seen here are only Light's illusions). Subsequently, in Silver Age 80-Page Giant #1 (July 2000), Robby lends the Dial to the now mind/body restored Justice League, allowing several of its members to transform themselves into new superheroes to defeat Agamemno's Injustice League at a time when they had learned how to defeat the Leaguers in their normal forms. Their respective new identities are:

1980s series

The second Dial H for Hero series debuted in the 1980s, in a special insert in Legion of Super-Heroes #272 (February 1981),[3] then ran in Adventure Comics #479-490 and continued in New Adventures of Superboy #28-49; the duo also appeared alongside Superman in DC Comics Presents #44. A new feature of this series was that the readers could submit new hero and villain characters, which were then used in the stories. The submitters were given credit for their creations (and a t-shirt with the series logo), but the characters became DC Comics' property. The original writer and artist in the series were Marv Wolfman and Carmine Infantino.

In this series, two other dials are discovered years later by teenagers Christopher "Chris" King and Victoria "Vicky" Grant of the New England town of Fairfax in a 'haunted' house. These dials — disguised as a watch and a necklace — only have the letters H-E-R-O on them, and work only for an hour, after which they will not work for another hour. King and Grant begin protecting Fairfax from a number of menaces. Unknown to them, most of these villains are created by a mysterious villain known only as The Master, who is obsessed with the H-dials for reasons unknown for most of the series.[2]

While anyone could use Chris and Vicki's H-dials, they always turned the user into a hero, regardless of his or her personality; even The Master was temporarily made good by one. This fact has been ignored in later stories. On one occasion, a hero's persona overwhelmed the heroic Chris' own personality; as "Ragnarok, the Cosmic Viking", he possessed no awareness of Chris King's memories and acted with disregard for others' property and safety, going so far as to threaten police officers and swat away Vicki (as the miniature heroine "Pixie") when she attempted to talk him down, failing to recognize her as an ally.[4] On a side note, it was a matter of contention with Chris when he first started using the dial that while Vicky changed into useful heroes with applicable powers, Chris's powers tended to be obscure and not particularly useful to defeat his opponent, such as when he changed into a super hero that could duplicate things and he outright began complaining about his useless ability. Indeed, it was that issue where Vicky showed Chris to think "outside the box" and use his temporary gifts creatively so they could be useful, at which point he helped defeat that issue's bad guy. Once this lesson was learned, Chris's super-hero changes became more relevant to the situation, but no explanation was given as to why this was.

Eventually Chris and Vicki discover that a fellow student named Nick Stevens has been drawing up superheroes as a hobby — and somehow, the dials turn them into those heroes. With Nick's help, they find out that their dials were created by a being called The Wizard (not to be confused with the DC Comics villain of the same name), whom the Master thought he'd killed years before. In truth, The Wizard faked his death while he looked for the original Hero Dial. With it, he merges with The Master — and transforms into Robby Reed, who explains that years before, he had used the dial to split in two so that he could disarm a dead man's switch, while his other self, the Wizard, defeated the villain who set it. However, the Wizard carried all of Robby's inherent goodness, while the Robbie that remain possessed only evil impulses; the original Hero Dial was lost when this Robby, renaming himself The Master, dialed "hide yourself", causing the dial to vanish along with The Master's and The Wizard's memories of their former life as Robby Reed. While The Master learned genetic techniques that allowed him to create his army of super-villains, the Wizard was driven to create the new H-dials, unconsciously designing limitations into them to prevent what happened to Robby from recurring (only heroic identities, a time limit, and the exclusion of letters other than H-E-R-O; the latter, however, did not prevent Chris from experimenting on one occasion and dialing H-O-R-R-O-R, with disastrous results[5]). With Nick developing the ability to actively influence the dials' results (rather than subconsciously as before), Robby passes his dial to Nick, and retires as a hero.[2]

In New Teen Titans #45 (June 1988) Victoria and Chris' history after the end of their series is revealed. After the two teens graduated from high school, they found they had gained the ability to transform without the dials — apparently because of their extensive use — but as a side-effect Vicky began experiencing mental problems. Vicky later joins a cult called the Children of the Sun, where she is physically and mentally abused, deranging her even more. She seeks out her former partner Chris in order to kill him. With help from the Teen Titans, Chris rescues her (in New Teen Titans #46). Chris now finds that he changes into a new superhero every hour, without the dial, and remains that way until he expends an unspecified amount of energy. He decides to continue his superhero career, using a suit provided by S.T.A.R. Labs to monitor his changes.

In Superboy and the Ravers #5 (January 1997), Hero Cruz finds Vicki's H-dial in the lair of Scavenger, and uses it to gain superpowers. A still deranged Vicky returns in Superboy and the Ravers #13 (September 1997) to get her dial back from Hero, but she regains her sanity once she uses the device. She is last seen in the care of the Forces, a family of metahumans.

2003 series

Main article: H.E.R.O. (comics)

DC relaunched the series again in 2003, this time simply titled H.E.R.O.. The new series, written by Will Pfeifer with art by Kano, focused on the effect the H-Dial has on a series of average people, whose lives are usually ruined by the pressures of superherodom. Robby Reed, now grown old and bitter, is searching for the missing dial, determined to retrieve it and keep a serial killer from getting his hands on it. The series lasted 22 issues with it ending with the H-Dial's powers internalized into Robby Reed and some other people who have come across it after the serial killer that was using it was stopped. The H-Dial ends up being sent back in time to 50,000 BC. Superman is featured in one of the stories.

Other appearances

As an epilogue to the Chris King/Vicki Grant Dial H series, The New Adventures of Superboy #50 features a story in which Chris King's watch is stolen from the Space Museum of the Legion of Super-Heroes' time period by a thief named Nylor Truggs, who flees with the dial to the ambiguous late 1960s/early 1970s era-Smallville of the original (Earth-One) Superboy by altering the dial's functions in some unexplained manner, allowing him to travel in time. Truggs further alters the H-dial to break the restriction that users can only transform into heroic identities, changing the "H" in the center of the dial to "V" for "villain". Truggs also makes the dial capable of changing individuals other than himself into villains if he desires; those transformed would then be under Truggs' control. Truggs transforms several of Clark Kent's high school friends, and forms a temporary alliance with a teenaged Lex Luthor, in a scheme to plant seismic devices in their time period so that Truggs can use those devices against the people of his own future time upon his return. Truggs' plan is foiled by Superboy, several members of the Legion, and Krypto the Superdog, the latter of which destroys the stolen H-Dial by crushing it in his jaws. Vicki Grant's H-Dial is also shown to have survived to the Legion's time—it is slated to replace King's dial in the museum display. As this story was published before the events of the Crisis on Infinite Earths (which erased the Earth-One Superboy from continuity) and the subsequent rebootings of the Legion of Super-Heroes' history, it is unlikely that any elements of this story exist in current continuity.

In Legionnaires #69, Lori Morning uses an H-dial that was given to her by the Time Trapper to gain superpowers, and becomes a member of Workforce. Lori gives the H-dial to Brainiac 5.1 to use against the Rift; the device is destroyed in the process. This timeline was also erased in the Legion reboot.

In a One Year Later storyline the H-Dial comes into the possession of Father Time, who hopes to clone the device and create an entire army of "one man Justice Leagues". However the device is stolen, and Johnny Mimic (the reformed Green Lantern villain called to act as a profiler) dupes Alan Scott into killing him while holding the device, destroying it for good.

Later, in The Brave and the Bold #9, February 2008, Robby Reed teamed up with the Metal Men, even lending the dial to Tin to allow him to transform into a more resilient superhero to defeat the monster conjured by the deranged alchemist Megistus. The dial, due to its transformative abilities, bore an optional part in Megistus' plans to draw the storm that brought about the genesis of Red Kryptonite upon Earth, warping it as to protect it from the events of the Final Crisis.

Dial H appeared again in issue 27 of the same series, this time in a team-up with Batman. While staying at a hotel in Gotham City, Robby's Dial is stolen by a down on his luck young man named Travers Milton. After using the Dial to transform into a Superman-esque flying hero named the Star, Travers assists Batman in defending Gotham after the Joker arranges a series of violent crimes to be committed throughout the city in order to break Batman. After discovering that the final challenge for Batman is a remote-controlled bomb placed over a group of bound and gagged men and women, Travers heroically sacrifices his life by flying out into the night sky while clutching the bomb, saving Batman and the hostages seconds before it detonates. Afterwards, Batman returns the H-Dial to Robby and tells him that it gave Travers what he had always wanted; the chance to be a hero. There is no indication given as to where either of the Brave & the Bold stories fit into Robby Reed's personal timeline, however.

In JLA: Another Nail, the H-Dial made a brief appearance when all time periods meld together. A hand can be seen barely clutching it.

Hero forms

Robby Reed

Chris King

Vicky Grant

Thomas Banker / Dial Man

Lori Morning (in Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4)

Travers Milton

Jerry Feldon (in H.E.R.O.)

Matt Allen (in H.E.R.O.)

Andrea Allen (in H.E.R.O.)

Captain Chaos (in H.E.R.O.)

Tony Finch (in H.E.R.O.)

Joe Walker (in H.E.R.O.)

Villains

The ones that wielded the H-Dial had encountered various villains in their adventures:

Robby Reed

Chris King and Vicky Grant

In other media

Miscellaneous

In popular culture

See also

References

  1. ^ a b House of Mystery #160 (July 1966)
  2. ^ a b c Jimenez, Phil (2008), "Dial "H" for Hero", in Dougall, Alastair, The DC Comics Encyclopedia, New York: Dorling Kindersley, pp. 101, ISBN 0-7566-4119-5, OCLC 213309017 
  3. ^ Manning, Matthew K.; Dolan, Hannah, ed. (2010). "1980s". DC Comics Year By Year A Visual Chronicle. Dorling Kindersley. p. 192. ISBN 978-0-7566-6742-9. "Within a sixteen-page preview in Legion of Super-Heroes #272...was "Dial 'H' For Hero," a new feature that raised the bar on fan interaction in the creative process. The feature's story, written by Marv Wolfman, with art by Carmine Infantino, saw two high-school students find dials that turned them into super-heroes. Everything from the pair's civilian clothes to the heroes they became was created by fans writing in. This concept would continue in the feature's new regular spot within Adventure Comics." 
  4. ^ Adventure Comics #488
  5. ^ DC Comics Presents #44
  6. ^ a b c d e Silver Age: Dial H for Hero (July 2000)
  7. ^ H.E.R.O. #1 (April 2003)
  8. ^ a b c d e H.E.R.O. #2 (May 2003)
  9. ^ H.E.R.O. #3 (June 2003)

External links